Ever noticed how some people keep bouncing back after challenges and setbacks?
What exactly is it that the likes of Joanne O’Riordan and filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice have that helps them to survive and thrive in the face of life’s harshest hurdles? According to positive psychologists, this X-factor is resilience – which all of us can develop and pass on to help children bounce back and bounce forward when the going gets tough.
Positive psychology researchers like Jolanta Burke are pioneering this exciting area. Studies have produced lots of invaluable tips on surviving and thriving and unearthed the seven key ingredients of resilience:
1. Emotional regulation
Coping with difficult feelings like anger, stress or plain old jealousy (it’s okay to envy Amal Clooney, right?) is key to resilience. It doesn’t mean that you deny emotion or bury it at the bottom of a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. As mindfulness gurus tell us, our thoughts and feelings aren’t necessarily reality and we can learn to accept and observe them without letting them overwhelm us or cause us to behave irrationally. Whether it’s mindfulness practice, yoga, a serene country walk… or a damn good boxercise session, find your emotional ‘safety valve’ when you need to let off a bit of steam. Help your children to regulate their own emotions by identifying their feelings, accepting them and supporting them to find a more positive way to express them.
2. Impulse control
All of us can remember a cringe-worthy incident when common sense went out the window and our impulses took over. That could have been blowing a fortnight’s pay on a pair of shoes you knew, deep down, you’d never wear, or blowing the horn at the poor learner driver who managed to conk out and block two lanes during rush hour. Losing control of our impulses can have all kinds of fallout – and, let’s face it, road rage doesn’t send the right messages to smallies in the back seat.
Interestingly, the ability to hold off on gratification impulses (the shoes, the Ben & Jerrys…) and aggression impulses are another secret to resilience. Studies of the instant gratification impulse in children have shown that those who can manage it tend to have better outcomes in adult life. This famous marshmallow experiment is incredibly cute.
Again, show your children that just because something or someone pushes your buttons it doesn’t mean you’re no longer in control of your behaviour (or that you have an excuse to behave badly).
3. Optimism
Positive psychologists believe that adopting a ‘glass half-full’ view of life makes us more resilient. They say that all of us can become more optimistic – by choosing to highlight the good things in our lives – and that our perspective on the world tends to be adopted subconsciously by our children.
Being more optimistic doesn’t mean ignoring the negative aspects of life, but it does mean looking at a situation as it is and focusing on ways to make it more positive. Actively choosing to count our blessings is a simple daily practice that can be done with the children. This simple practice has been shown to gradually adjust our outlook to a more positive one and to create the right mindset for overcoming life’s obstacles and learning from them.
4. Causal analysis
Don’t be put off by the jargon. This is the way that we explain events in life to ourselves and to our children. We do it consciously and unconsciously every day. Someone with a pessimistic explanatory style tends to see problems as permanent and widespread (and they tend to pass that on to their children). They’ll also tend to internalise problems and blame themselves. On the other hand, an optimistic explanatory style means we see life’s setbacks as temporary and changeable. We’ll also tend to think more flexibly, to examine situations realistically and to develop an effective plan of action.
Take a bit of time to examine your own explanatory style. Chat with friends and family for a reality check. You can also check your child’s explanatory style (remember younger children tend to blame themselves for many things that are beyond their control) by chatting with them and helping them to look at issues in a more realistic and optimistic way.
5. Empathy
The ability to walk a mile in another person’s moccasins (or Manolos) and to see the world as they do, is vital to successful relationships. Empathy is also another big ingredient in resilience because it boosts our ability to cooperate and relate to others.
Becoming more empathetic means giving yourself time and space to reflect on how someone else is thinking and feeling.
Children learn about empathy when they experience it themselves from parents and teachers. They learn to understand their own emotions when adults help them recognise and label them. They then learn to recognise and understand the feelings of others.
Empathy makes us all feel valued and accepted. It fosters wellbeing and builds up social bonds, so that we are more resilient as individuals and as members of families, groups and wider society.
6. Self-efficacy
This is about feeling that we can make a difference – in our own life and in the wider world. It means we have confidence in our own ability to overcome problems.
In tough times, we can tend to feel helpless or that our lives are out of control. Counteract this by reflecting back on your successes and the challenges you’ve already overcome. Consider the talents and strengths that you used to get yourself out of a bind and think about how you can dust these off and use them again.
In children, self-efficacy grows from the experience of successfully solving problems. Children naturally want to feel independent and competent. We can help develop a child’s sense of competence by giving them choices and allowing them to make age-appropriate decisions. Letting children do appropriate chores and tasks, and to make some decisions, helps them to feel in control of some aspects of their lives and builds their self-efficacy.
7. Reaching out
Resilience doesn’t mean toughing things out alone. Positive psychology shows that reaching out to friends, family and to new and unfamiliar experiences helps us to flourish in tough times. Sometimes we can be reluctant to reach out for fear of embarrassing ourselves or being rejected. Resilient people reach out without that fear because they see mistakes as opportunities to grow and learn.
We can help children to reach out by modelling this behaviour ourselves. Show them that it’s possible to cope constructively with failure or rejection. Show children how much they have learned and identify their growing areas of competence. This in turn builds self-efficacy and self-confidence.
